Heroes (TV series)/Headscratchers/Adam

How the heck did Adam fall 30 stories onto concrete and not leave a big pool of blood that would surely have been noticed by the CSIs who investigated Kaito's death?

• He stuffed his underwear with a lot of super-absorbent kitchen paper towels? * snerk*
• I'd rather want to know how the heck Sylar survived falling off the roof of the Homecoming building with Peter... he was shown lying there in a pool of blood, then he was gone. Peter would have been dead or gravely injured without Claire's regeneration. Sylar was only limping. So either Sylar has the standard "TV psychokiller" advantage (never assume a psychokiller is dead, the moment you take your eyes off his "corpse" he disappears and pops up angry and alive again in the next scene, usually behind you holding an axe)... or he stole a Feign Death power from one of the nameless people he killed offscreen prior to killing Molly's family. That would explain how Sylar survived when the doctor at Primatech had pronounced him dead after the medical experiments. Even Sylar looked surprised when he woke up again on that table.
  • I'm holding to the theory that he picked up super toughness somewhere along the line. It would also explain how he survived being shot early in season one.
    • He used his telekinesis to slow his descent. That’s why when he hit the ground he was able to walk away with only minor injuries while Peter would have been dead had he not absorbed Claire’s abilities. The same thing when he was shot; he used his telekinesis to “catchâ€� the bullet before it could actually penetrate his body.
  • Sylar's own inherent power - aside from brain-eating - is to be able to intuitively understand complex systems. That's why he was so good at fixing watches and clocks, and how he was able to deduce that peoples' powers are in their brains. He probably therefore can quickly diagnose his own injuries and use his telekinesis like psychic stitches to hold himself together.
• Haven't we seen Sylar eating a cockroach at some point? Maybe he has cockroach powers.
• He's never eaten a cockroach on screen, although they do seem to be associated with him. Possibly because Mohinder claimed them to be the pinnacle of evolution, and that's what Sylar considers himself to be.
• Sylar's powers seemed pretty poorly defined until after Homecoming. He seemed to be able to move way faster than a human, took gunshot wounds to the chest that didn't kill him (considering he's quick enough with the telekinesis to stop bullets), and he could do a whole bunch of other random stuff. Surviving that fall is just one more ill explained occurrence that's part of a whole list of them for Sylar.

How did Hiro get Adam into the coffin?

• He opened the lid and put him inside.
  • All of the options are creepy, which I'm pretty sure is intentional. Most likely: stopped time, propped frozen Adam up against a headstone, dug up a coffin, removed the old body, stuffed Adam inside, and re-buried it. About the only other minimally plausible option is teleporting Adam AND HIMSELF into the coffin with a dead body, leaving Adam, and then teleporting himself and the body out (the coffin we saw /may/ have been roomy enough to do this, but it's iffy). Pretty clearly the darkest thing Hiro's ever done, much worse than 'just' stabbing Sylar or lopping off Adam's head when he had the chance. This is about making Adam suffer, and he's gone to Squicky, obsessive lengths to ensure it.
    • Why would he have to use a previously buried coffin? Couldn't he have gotten an empty one and shut Adam inside it before burying it?
      • The coffin that he was buried in was under a concrete gravecap. I doubt Hiro would be able to put that in place by himself.
    • I prefer the idea that there was no corpse there. Hiro just chose a grave at random, teleported in with Adam, and they could both barely squeeze in because the coffin "happened" to be empty. Then Hiro left Adam, went back in time to the time the coffin was buried, and caused it to be interred with nobody in it. It's a simple trick from the Wyld Stallyns school of time travel.
    • The dead in Japan are virtually always cremated, not buried whole. Hiro may have had to acquire a coffin from the United States, stuff Adam inside, teleport the occupied coffin to Japan, and then bury it. Possibly he also took it back in time a little, so he could sneak it into the foundation of that memorial stone (which wouldn't have a coffin under it, just an urn sealed inside it) when it was being erected.
• More regarding Adam's Grave: Throughout the show, regenerative healers have been show to still be capable of death, but then just recover (Claire's several deaths, Peter's glass to the brain, Noah's phlebotinum blood transfusion, etcetera). Therefore, wouldn't Adam, deprived of oxygen and (perhaps) food and water, just die of asphixyation? Sure, he'd revive upon his inevitable release, but if he did die in such a manner, it's not really much of a punishment. It Just Bugs Me that the Fate Worse Than Death, well, isn't.
  • The comics have him constantly dying and reviving. Presumably his magic regeneration is converting C02 to O2 or something.
  • Hardly, unless regeneration gives you Bob's alchemical talents too. Probably Adam just kept suffocating over and other.
• In the fifth episode of the third season, Hiro shows the ability to not only teleport other objects without following them, but to teleport them without even touching them; he did so to Adam himself multiple times. Odds are, this is how he did the original deed.
  • That might not be the case. He probably stopped time, shoved him in the coffin and what we ended up seeing is the result rather than the process. (In fact, I think that's how he'd do all of his short-range teleportation). If that's how he did it earlier, he wouldn't have been complaining about exhuming the casket.

Burying Adam. How can anyone possibly think this is a good idea?

Ten bucks says Sylar is the one who digs him up...

• Hiro was really pissed off at Adam, and wanted him to suffer for the murder of his father and for betraying him in Feudal Japan.
• No excuse. Besides Hiro knows he was in the wrong in Japan and is taking out his guilt on Adam.
• Hiro wasn't aware of any other way to get rid of Adam, I think. Supposedly cutting off his head would do it, but Hiro wasn't at Victoria's place to discover that.
  • It's simpler than that. Hiro follows the Silver Age hero's code, which forbids killing, and expecially murder; he just can't bring himself to end Adam's life in cold blood.
    • I'm not so sure. I think Hiro is fully aware that he may need to kill a villain at some point - indeed, realizing that he has to do so is part of his journey in season one. Granted, his stabbing of Sylar was in a fair fight, not in cold blood as killing Adam would have been, but I still think Hiro would have just killed him if he had known how.
• Hiro was fully aware of Adams weakness, as Adams even tells him: "Come on, freeze time, cut my head off!" before their battle in 1671. It was what he would have done if Peter hadn't been around. He just decides to give him a little karma.

Why did Adam die?

Ok, yeah, he's 400 years old, but his body wasn't. When Peter lost his powers, he didn't suddenly regain every injury he'd ever sustained, because that would be stupid. So why did Adam?

• Here's my guess: Adam's ability was at work 24/7 to keep him alive. When he lost his power, he lost... well, himself. Peter's regenerations were more like one-off applications of that power--it's not like regeneration would have to work all the time to keep a mended bone whole and what not. Perhaps not the most satisfying explanation, but I certainly can't think of anything better.
• In season 2, he was given those "Haitian pills" to suppress his powers. He's also presumably met the real Haitian before and lived through several eclipses. Why is it only now that losing his power causes instadeath.
  • This is probably because the Haitian and his pills only suppress the powers, while the eclipse stripped them completely. As for how he lived through the other eclipses, Word of God says that while the eclipses always mean something meaningful for the heroes, the actual effect is fairly random.
• Well, doesn't Arthur also take people's life force or something, or did I just pick that out of nowhere? I mean he killed Matt's dad when he took his power too.
• I thought that Claire (+Peter+Sylar) and Adam (+Pa) just had different variations of regeneration because if they have different weaknesses (Claire needs a shot to the back of her head to temporarily kill her, Adam dies permanently with any headshot) they might as well have other different properties as well

Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?

Unlike most people (apparently), I actually liked Season 2. It wasn't as good as Season 1, sure, but it wasn't bad. I do, however, have one small question: why is Adam still alive for it? The Company founders know how to kill him (Victoria Pratt says as much right before Peter stops her from doing it), so why don't they? Why keep him locked away for 30 years instead? If it was to do research on him, why isn't any research shown being done during the flashbacks in "Four Months Ago"? Just seems like quite a plothole to me.

• To make this worse Adam said that they couldn't kill him. Plothole indeed!